We Don’t Care, Cuz She’s Funny
Red State’s Dan McLaughlin makes a noble and convincing defense of Sarah Palin, essentially making the reasonable case that she cannot be as astonishingly stupid as we are led to believe. Essentially, the idea that she doesn’t know the countries that make up North America, or that Africa is a continent, or that she is in any way responsible for that $150,000 wardrobe is the result of malicious elements within the McCain campaign who are more interested in deflecting blame for their disastrous campaign and discrediting the Alaskan Governor’s future influence on the party.
So what.
Perpetuating this defense, getting into the weeds if you will, only serves to highlight the dysfunction within what’s left of the GOP. Culturally she is a laughing stock. Her reputation has reached a punch-line status George Bush and Dan Quayle took years to attain, and she did it within a couple of months. Rehabilitate her at your own risk.
Whether she did or did not know this or that will never erase the moose in the helicopter spotlight look on her face when she couldn’t/wouldn’t tell Katie Couric what magazines she read.
Should the damage control parties succeed in a partial triage of her reputation, making her palatable enough to remain on the national stage, her baggage will remain regardless of the objective truth or the essential fairness of it all. She wasn’t ready, might be some day, but the damage has been done. It’s too late.
But that not the whole story. Her politics, the appeal of her core beliefs is so narrowly focused to such a dwindling segment of the population — on top of a caustic and dangerous tone descended directly from the Gingrich/DeLay style of scortched earth conservativism — dooms her and her faithful followers to distracting nuisance status, marginalized in an era requiring national unity to address a nation on the brink of several disasters.
No doubt, she’ll retain the support of the kooks. And that’s fine. All the better to identify and separate them from the herd. See, I personally think that a sane and reasonable conservative opposition is a good thing — at least compared to what we’ve been subject to for the last several decades.
As we’ve seen the last eight years when the extreme right wing gets ahold of the GOP leadership, as repulsive the extreme is to the “center,” they do have the ability to capture that 50% +1 needed to foist their poison on the rest of us — with horrendous consequences. That’s a fete the extreme left has never duplicated despite the vile shouts of socialist, communist and liberal-fascists at the mere suggestion of a 4% tax hike on millionaires from basement headquarters that shall remain unlinked. When the great pendulum of the political winds blow right again, in four years or four decades, I’d rather the conservative faction be a reasonable facsimile of sane than the nutbags we’ve suffered lately.
Sarah Palin does not fit the definition of sane, at least in the sense that her rhetoric permits reasoned compromise or inclusive policies. Bottom line, her brand of parochial and religious based intolerance is unacceptable in a leadership role in a nation as diverse as ours.
That, and she’s fucking goofy.
Just like the election of Barack Obama in 2008 is a turning point in modern American political history, so is the defeat of the Republicans this same year. In years to come, smart Democratic politicians will label their opponents as being hopelessly out of touch with middle class values. The term “Alaska conservative,” might even become code for “corrupt and clueless.” And if/when that happens, Sarah Palin will be Exhibit A.
Bring her on.
Gee, there’s no bias in your views or thinking is there? Sarah Palin was brought in by her party to run alongside McCain. I don’t remember her asking for the job. As for her being ” goofy ” or ” stupid ” I think it shows guts to do what she did, take the hits she took and fought back. Your big bad Obama had to resort to mudslinging, when he should take a good look at himself. Since he had to buy his election with the likes of his ” Good Friend ” Oprah paying the bills!
Let’s see what the next 4 years brings before we annoint him.
Sarah Palin was brought in by her party to run alongside McCain. I don’t remember her asking for the job. As for her being ” goofy ” or ” stupid ” I think it shows guts to do what she did, take the hits she took and fought back.
I agree 100%.
Your big bad Obama had to resort to mudslinging, when he should take a good look at himself.
Somewhat to my surprise, mudslinging didn’t have as much to do with the outcome of this election (one way or the other) as I might have thought.
Since he had to buy his election with the likes of his ” Good Friend ” Oprah paying the bills!
From what I understand Obama raised about $700 million for his campaign during the last two years. And while Oprah has way more money to her name than that, I don’t think seriously that she shoveled more than a few thousand in his direction.
Now, if you mean her endorsement was worth millions, well yes I would agree. Oprah is hugely influential with a segment of the electorate that I like to call “sensible middle class women.” Not exactly McCain’s (or Palin’s) constituency.
“Sarah Palin was brought in by her party to run alongside McCain. I don’t remember her asking for the job.”
Actually, by all accounts, she lobbied quite hard for the job.
“As for her being ” goofy ” or ” stupid ” I think it shows guts to do what she did, take the hits she took and fought back.”
Yes, well, George Bush and Joe the Plumber have both shown “guts” and neither of them are qualified to be the leader of the free world either.